


There'll Be a Time When Our Hearts Beat the Same

by stellahibernis



Series: I Still See Your Flame [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky is rescued in the fifties, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve is always in the periphery, agonizingly slow recovery, he's got a pretty good support network though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 19:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7476252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellahibernis/pseuds/stellahibernis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He bolts upright on the floor where he was curled up and pushes himself further into the alcove, scanning his surroundings. There are the shapes of the furniture; the tiny table, three chairs, the couch. There’s the bed he doesn’t sleep in. The doorway leading into the hallway. As always, the curtain doesn’t fully block the light from the street lamp below. The nightly noises of Brooklyn filter through, and he slowly realizes he’s holding a knife. He let’s it drop like it’s suddenly burning him, feels sick even at the idea of having a knife right then. He curls the fingers of his left hand into a fist, opens them and then again makes a fist. The soft clicking of the mechanism. He draws a deep breath.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“My name is James Barnes. I’m in Brooklyn, New York. It’s 1955. I’m free. I’m safe. I’m alone.”</i>
</p><p>It's hard to build a new life when all your mind seems to know how to do is settle around an absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There'll Be a Time When Our Hearts Beat the Same

**Author's Note:**

> The rating is (unfortunately and unsurprisingly) not due to any fun reasons. This is not close to requiring any archive warnings but discusses things that happened to Bucky while he was a prisoner as well as aftermath up to and including brief discussion of suicide (no one is close to acting on it) enough that it really can't be rated G. On the scale of Bucky at HYDRA/recovery fics it's not from the rougher end, though.

The thing about pain is that at some point one gets used to it. It doesn’t actually disappear; it only fades to background, but it’s enough to mean that in general pain has to be extremely intense before one doesn’t find a way to cope with it. At least enough to get by. Torture, on the other hand, by someone extremely skilled, is different in that it just goes on and on and on. The pain can be controlled and varied, which means it’s impossible to get used to it, impossible to start managing the pain and suffering.

It’s possible to resist for a while, maybe even a long while. However, take a torturer that’s skilled enough, and above all determined enough, and everyone will arrive at a point where they will do anything to make it stop. They will say anything they think their tormentors want to hear. They will promise to do anything they are commanded.

It happened. It didn’t mean he stuck to those promises.

He’s pushed into a room, bare floor and walls, empty except for a man tied to a chair bolted to the floor. The man is naked and bleeding, bruises mottling his skin, evidence of a thorough beating. He notes the width of the shoulders, the way every muscle is defined. Probably took a lot to break the man down, to subdue him enough that they could tie him up. There’s a static noise in his head, words he can’t quite identify. 

He’s given a knife and all the guards in the room point their guns at him, the instruction clear. Kill or else. One of the guards steps next to the tied man and yanks off the bag covering his head. A shock of blond hair, matted with blood, and the static in his head turns into a scream. One word, over and over again. A name. 

The man raises his head and looks at him, the blue eyes more familiar than his own. He steps ahead, raises the knife…

 

…And he bolts upright on the floor where he was curled up and pushes himself further into the alcove, scanning his surroundings. There are the shapes of the furniture; the tiny table, three chairs, the couch. There’s the bed he doesn’t sleep in. The doorway leading into the hallway. As always, the curtain doesn’t fully block the light from the street lamp below. The nightly noises of Brooklyn filter through, and he slowly realizes he’s holding a knife. He let’s it drop like it’s suddenly burning him, feels sick even at the idea of having a knife right then. He curls the fingers of his left hand into a fist, opens them and then again makes a fist. The soft clicking of the mechanism. He draws a deep breath.

“My name is James Barnes. I’m in Brooklyn, New York. It’s 1955. I’m free. I’m safe. I’m alone.”

He recites the mantra three more times, until the nightmare is no more vivid than all the others he’s had since coming back. Just one more thing where reality was mixed with imagination. He never killed Steve.  _ He did not kill Steve. _ When they were trying to get him to co-operate, Steve was already dead.

***

Bucky’s left arm is troublesome, to say the least. Not that it doesn’t work, because it does, so well that it feels unreal most of the time. When other people that lost limbs in the war have to learn to live without them, he has enough articulation to be able to function pretty much normally. There isn’t nearly as much sensation as in his real hand, but there’s a touch feedback to help him grab things without breaking them or losing his grasp. As is, it’s the third most science fiction like thing he’s encountered, and to him that’s about five too many. He can hear Steve’s voice, so real Bucky could swear he was standing right behind him, pointing out how he always loved the stories about inventions and science. It’s just one more proof of the irony his life seems to be these days. He’s finally learned to not turn his head at these instances, because even when he knows there’s no one there, the absence still hurts.

He’s been back to the US for a month, and he’s at SHIELD HQ testing his arm, because it’s a new one. The one HYDRA had fitted him with had been useful but heavy, not to mention the integration to the nerve connection had been erratic at best, sometimes overloading him at the worst moments. Howard had redesigned the arm, connected the new parts onto the ones surgically crafted on him so that there was no need for another operation. Now Bucky’s running tests, giving feedback to Howard who calibrates the arm accordingly, all the while talking excitedly about it. For Howard it’s a technological marvel, and it’s not like he’s wrong. Bucky can see that, but that doesn’t change how he feels about it. 

When he looks at the arm he sees something foreign, something that was forced on him. Something he didn’t choose and doesn’t want. And yet, to be without it would be worse. So much worse. Hence he lets Howard be excited, and listens to the clicking sound of the metal plating that happens when he moves it. Howard had offered to make it look more like an actual arm, but Bucky had refused. It is something foreign, and trying to hide it would feel like running away.

After they are done he pulls on his shirt, his coat, his gloves, and looks almost like anyone else. He refuses the invitations to dinner, and it grates him how everyone is so accepting of it, so overtly understanding of him and his trauma. The mixture of pity and wariness makes him uncomfortable with most people that know about him, which is why he mostly stays in his apartment in Brooklyn. He takes walks in the middle of the night, regrets that alcohol is absolutely useless, and has too many guns and knives on him at all times. There are days when he doesn’t go out at all, because everyone looks like HYDRA, and he doesn’t trust himself to not act on that fear.

It rains that night and his shoulder aches and he wishes he’d never come back at all.

***

It takes Bucky two months to go see his family. 

It’s not yet officially revealed anywhere that he’s not dead. The paperwork at the army is done, with the help of SHIELD, and he’s got ten years worth of back pay, which means he doesn’t have to immediately seek work. The general public doesn’t know, and part of him would want to keep it that way. Another part of him knows it’s probably impossible, if only because at some point he’s bound to snap at something that’s being said about Steve, or the way the legacy of Captain America is used. Already he’s fumed about it a few times. He’s just not yet ready for it to be public knowledge that he is back. 

Peggy found out things about his family for him, which is why Bucky knows his father is dead, has been for two years. Becca has taken herself through school and has a position as a copywriter in an ad agency. She’s married and has a daughter. Their mother lives with Becca and her family, and as far as Bucky can tell, having discreetly observed their house, they are happy enough. It’s a picture where he doesn’t feel like he fits in anymore, but he knows it would be unfair of him to not tell them, to let them learn about him being alive from some news article or history book. He owes them, especially owes Becca, better than that.

He doesn’t really look that different from other people walking down the streets of New York. He’s fully aware of it, and there’s a disconnect between knowing it and also knowing that he is different from all of them. He’s got a haircut that resembles the one he had before the war, he’s clean-shaven, his clothes are new and well made but not especially pricey. It’s a rainy and cold day, odd for the summer, which means he can hide his arm under his coat, and the glove goes unnoticed, especially when he carries the nosegay of pansies for Becca in his left hand. 

There are people who would look him in the eyes and know that there’s something more underneath. They would know he’s seen terrible things, and that he never really stopped seeing them. They’d know that for him the nightmares are always there, always waiting. Even that doesn’t matter. There are a lot of men that have that look, a lot of men that left a part of them in the war. Sometimes Bucky thinks he left a lot more parts than anyone can tell. Sometimes he thinks he left behind so many parts that he’ll never be able to function as is.

He knocks on the Proctors’ door on a Saturday afternoon, at a perfectly polite hour for visiting. It’s Becca’s husband who opens the door, with a slight questioning look on his face. Bucky’s voice is steady when he says, “I’m looking for Winifred and Rebecca Barnes. Or I understand she’s Proctor now.”

For a second Bucky has no idea how it’ll go, whether the explanations are going to be tricky, except something clearly clicks in place, and Thomas Proctor’s mouth makes a perfect O in a silent exclamation. He’s clearly shaken when he motions Bucky to step inside as he calls into the house, “Darling, there’s someone to see you.”

Bucky’s seen Becca before this, during his discreet reconnaissance walks, but it’s only now that it hits him that considering years actually lived, her little sister is technically older than him. It’s not a big difference between them, but it feels monumental. She was always his younger sister, with more fire and energy than sometimes was necessary. It wasn’t only once or twice that Bucky despaired to have both her and Steve in his life. And even those moments, he’d known he never wanted anything else.

Now she’s older, an adult with a family of her own, his sister that he hasn’t seen in more than a dozen years. There’s so much between them now, and still it’s familiar as if written in his bones when she speaks his name, calls him Bucky the way no one has since 1945. She hugs him so tight that air is almost squeezed out, and he’s never been more aware of his left arm, not even when Howard was working on it. Then his mother is there, and finally there are tears, although not by him. He thinks he forgot how to cry sometime at the beginning of the decade.

It takes a while for them to truly believe it’s actually him, and then there are questions and explanations, as much as he feels like he wants to tell, as much as he thinks they will be able to handle. It’s hard for him to see his mother’s heart break anew when she sees his metal arm, and harder to tell the stories. He’s grateful they let him talk and not talk as he wants.

Becca and Thomas’ daughter, Jamie, is only two years old, and hence doesn’t understand much about the conversation. She stares at Bucky with her huge brown eyes, and isn’t at all afraid of the arm, the opposite really. Soon she climbs onto his lap, endlessly fascinated by how the plates shift when he moves his fingers. Bucky catches Becca smiling at him and he feels something that’s a little like peace for the first time. He also feels almost silly the he came there carrying a gun and two knives, but he knows it’ll be a long time before he’ll be able to not have them.

***

A defining trait about Becca always was her curiosity, her relentlessly inquisitive nature. Now that her brother is back from death, it’s a new mystery to solve, and Bucky shouldn’t have expected otherwise. 

After that first time, Bucky visits them more or less regularly. Sometimes he has to call and tell them he can’t make it, on the days when leaving his apartment feels like too much of a risk. Usually he manages to go, and the normalcy of their life soothes him most of the time. Some days it leaves him feeling exposed and unprotected, but he tries to step on that feeling as much as he can. Becca’s home is a safe place. He soon grows to like Thomas, a quiet man who served at the end of the war, and never quite happened to experience the worst of the battle. Bucky is grateful of that, glad that those shadows don’t invade his sister’s life any more than they do due to him.

In the beginning none of them asks too many questions, and they accept the short and edited version of events. Thomas and especially Bucky’s mother keep doing so, apparently happy just that he’s there, content to put that part of past behind them. Not Becca though, and soon enough Bucky starts to catch her looking at him, clearly wondering. It’s obvious that what’s keeping her from actually asking is that she can tell it’s hard on him. Her restraint is not really helping though, it’s something he can feel between them all the time, and he finally comes to conclusion that he needs to tell her more. Not everything because he can’t do that, maybe never can, but enough to make her understand. It’s not something he’s keen to do, because it will again change their relationship, but it’s needed.

One weekend it’s just them, because Thomas had work and their mother has gone to visit friends. When Jamie is taking her nap, Bucky brings it to table, telling her to ask the question that’s bothering her. It’s not exactly what he expects.

“I just keep thinking, they should have looked for you. Why didn’t they? Why didn’t Steve? They could have —”

Bucky has to stop her before she can say they could have found him. In theory, it’s accurate, but it’s not the  _ truth _ _,_ because considering the mission and the depth of the ravine, it was something he knew couldn’t have happened. “Don’t. You see, the drop wasn’t survivable. Shouldn’t have been. They did nothing wrong and I don’t blame them for that.”

He ends up telling her about the first time he was HYDRA’s prisoner, how he’d known something was different about him, but that he never told anyone. In retrospect, he suspects that if he’d told Steve, they would have found out that he’d been enhanced somehow. Maybe then Steve would have come back, with the mad hope that he’d survived the impossible. But he hadn’t told Steve, because just looking at him had been too strange. Because making it through the war, making sure Steve wasn’t killed for something Bucky could prevent, had been all that he could handle. He’d ignored all the signs that carried the truth of his transformation, because it had felt unreal, more like something he might have imagined. Later, when it had become real and mattering, it had been too late. Maybe it had always been too late.

He talks to Becca a little about what happened in Russia, although he says he isn’t sure what they were after, even if he knows. It’s not something she needs to contemplate. She already knows his memory is still jumbled, probably always will be, although it has been getting better. He lets her think it’s due to the injuries sustained in the fall, and not the effect of chemicals and torture and brainwashing he went through. It’s not something he wants to talk about anyway.

At the end they circle back to Steve, as a lot of Bucky’s thoughts seem to do even when he tries to push them away. Becca says, “He blamed himself, you know. He sent us a letter, after. We only got it when he was gone too. And after you came back, I thought. You know.”

“You thought that maybe he was right in blaming himself,” Bucky concludes.

“Yes. Not very charitable of me,” she admits, rueful.

“Natural, though,” Bucky says. “It’s okay. And I don’t blame him, and you shouldn’t either. I don’t regret any of it, being there with him on the train. If I had to do it all again, I still wouldn’t hesitate.”

Becca steps into another room and comes back with a letter, the address written in Steve’s familiar cursive. “Here,” she says. “I think maybe you should have it.”

Bucky takes the letter, because it’s the only thing he can think of doing, but doesn’t open it. He tucks it into his pocket, and in the evening moves it into his stash of important papers he keeps inside a wall so that no burglar will find them.

***

In a later conversation Becca had remarked that even though it clearly was true that Bucky didn’t resent Steve for not coming to get him after the fall, there certainly was something he did resent Steve for. She hadn’t been wrong then, and she still isn’t wrong. There is something Bucky resents Steve for, even though it often feels like he has no right to do so. It’s still the truth.

America and the whole world changed a lot during the ten years he was gone. There was the normal change, the little things that constantly evolve. Then there was the adjustment to the post-war situation, and continuing tightness of the political climate. Even another war, if smaller in scale than the one he fought in. Peggy, Howard and the Commandos helped Bucky to adjust and get up to speed with everything, and it hadn’t really been that difficult. These days it is only the references to Steve that trip him up.

He doesn’t happen upon them constantly, and after he started to learn the pattern he actively avoids situations and things where he might see them. Still, every once in a while he comes upon something to do with Captain America. Maybe someone says something on the train, and when it happens he gets out on the next station, because the closed quarters are bad enough as it is. Maybe it is something on the radio, or the paper, or a billboard, or a politician trying to gain political points. Often he notices that the context where Captain America is used is the sort that Steve wouldn’t approve of.

The thing that trips him up is that it makes him think of Steve, and then there’s the disconnect between the Steve from his memories and what’s in front of him. Usually it isn’t at all about Steve, not really. The public has an image of Captain America that seems to be drifting further and further away from the real man that wore the mantle and without whom it wouldn’t mean a thing. They think they know him when they don’t, and it all adds to the complicated tangle in Bucky’s head. 

Even the public remembrance is abstract, removed, trying to be intimate and failing.

***

It’s the middle of the night, and Bucky is out, on his way to Prospect Park. It’s drizzling and he’s grateful for it, because it means there are even less people around than usual. He doesn’t want to be interrupted or distracted, and he purposefully modifies his walk into something that’ll tell anyone who sees him that he’s not worth the trouble to try and mug. He’s got two guns and three knives on him, and he’s fairly confident he’d be able to deal with anyone and anything he might happen upon in the city. He just doesn’t particularly want to.

He finally comes to the park, and there heads to the small clearing right at the northern end of it, between the library and the museum. He thinks the site is fairly appropriate, considering the love that Steve had for arts and stories.

The statue is life-size and made of bronze, raised on a granite pedestal that bears the names of Brooklynites that died in the war. He knows his own name is there somewhere, but he doesn’t look for it. Bucky knows there are several statues depicting Steve, but this one he thinks is the only one that grasps even a glimpse of the man. The others show him in a heroic pose, shield raised high, and it’s all Captain America. This one portrays Steve simply standing there, his head slightly bent, shield on his back. Somehow the sculptor has caught a bit of Steve’s body language, so much that it’s almost eerie to Bucky in the dark.

He sits down on the ground without caring that it’s wet, and takes out the bottle of whiskey he brought with him and takes a long drink. Not that it does anything. Alcohol has been mostly useless since that day in the bar, when he’d switched from beer to harder liquor, and still hadn’t managed to get drunk. He’d been waiting for Steve to come and ask him to come with him on the mission to destroy HYDRA, knowing he’d say yes, because it was the only answer he had for Steve. It is still the only answer.

For a long time he just sits there silent. He’s not even sure what he came here to do. It is a kind of an abstract idea, because this is the only place that even resembles a memorial that could have any meaning to him. Maybe he thought he’d find some kind of closure here. Or if he’s completely honest to himself, and he tries to be, he’d known already before he came that it was a futile wish. Only time could grant that, relief from the pain of missing Steve, and he doesn’t take even that for granted. Still, now that he’s here he tries to remember what he wanted to do, or say. He’s not sure if it matters whether he finds the words, but he’s already here, so he might as well go ahead.

It’s probably another hour before he speaks.

“You know, sometimes I wonder what I’d do if you somehow came back, if you were suddenly standing in front of me. Depends on a day I think. Some days I would hug you so hard you couldn’t breath, not even with those enhanced lungs. Other days I want to punch you. I’m not going to lie, those days are rather more common. But you probably could guess that.

“Why did you have to do it anyway? I don’t mean putting the plane down, I know why that happened. But why didn’t you try to get out? That I don’t get.”

He pauses for a long while before continuing, “I looked through the files, you know. Listened to the recording. You could have tried more. You could have tried to jump, because when the plane is going down, it’s going down. You don’t need to sit there to make sure.

“Why didn’t you try? Why didn’t you fight to live? I don’t get it, you never did anything but, always tried to do more. Why did you stop trying? I don’t know if I’ll ever understand, but it happened, and you’re not here and I miss you. That’s it I suppose, what I wanted to say. That I miss you. Sometimes it feels like there is a hole in the air because you should be there but aren’t. 

“I said before I’m not going to lie, so tell you what, sometimes I’ve considered putting a bullet in my head just so I could come and punch you right now. I’ve considered putting a bullet in my head for other reasons, but that’s one. I just don’t know if we’d end up in the same place. Is it a mortal sin if you just don’t do anything to try and help yourself, as opposed to actually swallowing a gun? I don’t know, and I’m not inclined to ask anyone either. Do those rules even mean anything? I guess you’d know now.

“But you know, it would be kind of hypocritical of me to put a bullet in my head after this rant, wouldn’t it?”

He falls silent, it feels like there’s nothing more to say. When the sky starts to get lighter he gets up on stiff legs, and only then realizes he’s shivering. He walks home at a brisk pace, and doesn’t think he’s any closer to peace than he was the previous night.

***

Sleeping is a problem, to put it mildly. If someone had told Bucky before the war that he’d forget how to do it, he’d have laughed, but here he is. He doesn’t know how to sleep anymore. Of course, the body can go on for only so long, so he basically ends up collapsing, in a somewhat controlled way, every day or two. The sleep or whatever it is lasts anything from two to six hours, and habitually ends up in a nightmare. He only remembers them about half the time after waking, but it doesn’t really make a difference in how he feels afterward.

He has a bed, but he doesn’t manage to sleep in it. He feels too exposed, too high away from the ground. Instead he curls in the little alcove with his blankets and guns. He can see the door and window from there, and he is reasonably shielded by the weight bearing wall. He sleeps in whatever clothes he happened to wear that day, and after waking up he works out the kinks in his muscles by doing the exercises he was taught at the basic or at the YMCA when he was young. Then he eats, mostly because one needs to do so, not for any preference really. As far as he is concerned, he might as well still be on the wartime rations.

On the nights when he can’t sleep he often still ends up sitting in the alcove, thinking he must have forgotten how to live. He sees other people around him, going from place to place with purpose, many of them having a hard time, many enjoying their day, but above all they live. He feels like he’s just going through motions. There are a lot of days when it’s difficult to see what the point of it all is.

***

He’s been awake for over fifty hours, and he’s curled in his corner under a blanket, knowing that at some point soon he will just have to give in to unconsciousness. For several hours already he’s been feeling detached, as if everything is unreal and nothing means anything. He hasn’t been out of his apartment in over twelve hours, because the detachment could be dangerous. He doesn’t like to think what would happen if he was out and someone spooked him on a moment like this when the people don’t seem real. He’d rather not find out.

He lets his mind wander, and maybe it is how one gets to sleep. He’s not sure about it anymore, can’t remember. He remembers how it feels to wake up, in all kinds of different situations. At home in the morning, safe. Too early for school, or just at the right time to spend a day with friends. He remembers waking up in the tiny apartment they shared with Steve, another workday waiting, or in the middle of the night when Steve was coughing in a way that worried Bucky. He remembers waking up in the trenches, instantly alert like he never managed to be back at home.

There are so many different kinds of wakings that he remembers, but no memory of how to get to sleep.

His memories from New York before the war vary in their clarity, some are just glimpses or feelings, others more coherent, but there is a kind of hazy quality in all of them. Compared to them, there are others from the war time that are searing in their brightness. It feels to him like they are carved into his brain. Some of them feel more like reliving rather than remembering when he calls them up from the depths of his mind. He’d like to put it on the strain of war, how the situation itself was such that it left a lasting impression, but he knows it’s not the case. All the clear memories he has are from after he was HYDRA’s prisoner. It’s the serum that does it. It altered his brain so that everything recorded after is just that much more effective. If he could find it in himself, he’d laugh at the irony that pretty much everything after he started remembering better is awful, things he really wouldn’t mind being lost forever. 

Some of it is lost, or fragmented. Sometimes he thinks of something he remembers happened, except he must be combining at least two different memories, because in the beginning it’s fall and at the end it’s winter, and he can’t tell where the transition is. He knows it used to be a lot more fragmented in his head, but the serum has worked to put things back. Only it seems that the pieces weren’t connected quite right, and who knows what might be missing.

Sometimes he almost hopes that he’s missing some of his happier memories, if only because then they would have actually happened. He knows it’s probably not true, though. He’s fairly sure his memory of the horror of the war is accurate, at least in the broad way if not details. It was most of it bad, with only fragments of good in it, almost too tiny for him to be able to see them now.

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but he wakes up when the sun is already up, and the dream still lingers. In it he’s in Prospect Park, on the little clearing between the library and the museum. Steve is standing in front of him, facing mostly away. Bucky can see the curve of his cheekbone and a hint of eyelashes. Steve’s hair is tousled by the wind and he’s raised his face up towards the sun, looking straight into it without flinching. He’s wearing civilian clothes, and he’s hale and hearty, standing taller than Bucky.

It takes a few seconds for the dream to break and for him to remember the truth. The reality slams into him and he staggers into his tiny bathroom, retching. It’s a whole new kind of nightmare, one that is terrible only after he wakes up.

***

In the early days the Commandos had all been there to support Bucky, and he had been grateful for it. Even if almost everything had changed, and the center of their team was gone, they still shared the kind of bond that came from relying on each other in the worst horror known to man for almost two years.

They are still a tight knit group, even though Monty and Dernier have gone back to Europe and Jim and Dum Dum are thinking of getting out of the spy circles and aim for something more normal. Gabe is the one that clearly intends to make his career at SHIELD, and then there’s Bucky who doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Thinking ahead seems like a chore when he doesn’t even know how to sleep.

The team is still probably the group of people he’s the most comfortable around. With his family he keeps his troubles under wraps as much as he can, pretends to be doing better than he is so they won’t worry. Many people at SHIELD step around him like he’s breakable, even after he’s been back for more than half a year. Maybe they are right, because on most days he doesn’t feel that stable at all, but it doesn’t really help when people treat him like that. The Commandos just are there, joking around as they always used to, and don’t seem bothered by the times Bucky’s quieter and more serious than the mood allows. He doesn’t have to pretend to be anything other than he is, and it is relaxing.

He has to go back to SHIELD regularly for check ups to make sure his arm is working fine and to get the needed adjustments and maintenance. At first Howard did it, but soon enough Gabe suggested he could help, since Howard tends to be busy, for all that it isn’t always due to work. Gradually it becomes a norm that Bucky sees Gabe when it comes to his arm, and it suits him fine. There was always tension between him and Howard, and it hasn’t fully let up. 

It takes Bucky a while to realize there is something digging at Gabe. It’s strange how things are for him these days. Some things are so easy to read about people, whether they are on edge or afraid or angry for example. And other things are harder, he really has to think about them, and he vaguely remembers it didn’t use to be like that before. Just plain happiness sometimes trips him up, as well as sadness. Guilt is something that varies, depending on how it’s targeted and how it manifests. 

Eight months after his rescue, just before Christmas Bucky finally asks Gabe about it. Gabe has just finished working on his arm, and carefully sets his tools down before looking Bucky in the eyes. “I’ve been wrestling with myself, because I feel like I should apologize, but you don’t want people to do that, I’ve noticed.”

It is very much true, and Bucky just asks, “Why do you think you should apologize?”

“On the train, it just feels like I should have done something. Maybe if I’d acted differently it wouldn’t have happened, maybe —”

“You did nothing wrong,” Bucky interrupts him. “Your task was to secure the engine compartment and you did. We all knew it was risky, and made the choice to go. There is nothing on you, no reason for you to apologize.”

Gabe looks at him for a second and nods, clearly believing.

“Great,” Bucky says. “Since we’re done, let’s find a place where we can get a beer or ten. On me.”

“You still can’t get drunk,” Gabe says and grins.

“No, but you can, and I can pretend. I used to be pretty good at it. We just had an emotional conversation, it’s the only thing we can do now to save face.”

Gabe clearly gets what he means by the the joke that isn’t really, and gets up. “I know a place.”

***

During the war Bucky was never truly comfortable with Peggy and Howard, for all that they were close to Steve. They were a part of Steve’s new world, one where Bucky felt like he didn’t quite belong in. In many cases he literally didn’t belong in it, considering the barriers between officers and non-coms. He worked with them fine when he had to, and most of the time it wasn’t that relevant anyway, since their team was usually on the field away from command.

It’s different now, all of them being civilians and back home, but it doesn’t mean he’s automatically more at ease with them. Sometimes he wonders if he would have liked Howard if they’d come together somehow in a world without the war. He wonders if they would have gotten along then. Of course there is the fact that they moved in completely different social circles, which means that without an upheaval like the war they never would have met, so even wondering is rather a moot point.

Now they are bound by the shared experience, even when they had such different roles during the war. They also share the loss of Steve, and it’s a deeply felt pain for both of them, even if it’s not quite the same.

Bucky knows Howard only met Steve right before the procedure where he was given the serum, which means he never knew Steve the way he was before. Bucky can tell that Howard’s perception of Steve isn’t like his. For Howard, there is little to no distinction between Steve Rogers and Captain America, they are all the same person, whereas in Bucky’s mind they are forever divided. It’s why there is always a sense of Howard perceiving Steve wrong, and the resentment stemming from that.

Bucky has always been a fairly realistic person, capable of assessing situations very much as they are, and with it comes self-examination as well as keeping track of his surroundings. He’s aware that people’s perception of themselves is different from other’s, and because of this he has for a long time now tried to be as honest as he can when it comes to himself. Sometimes he thinks this tendency increased during his captivity, from the necessary need to be able to assess both himself and the conditions around him as clearly and as fast as possible whenever he was taken out of the ice or transferred somewhere.

Because of his ability to look at himself as clearly as everything else, it doesn’t escape his knowledge that in all probability both he and Howard treat their memories of Steve in a personal way, and that it’s likely that neither version is accurate or correct. It doesn’t stop the resentment, just makes him find it a bit funny in a way that is probably warped. He’s also aware that a good chunk of the resentment comes from the very simple feeling of being replaced. Before the war he was pretty much all that Steve had, up until he left. After Steve came after him in Austria he had to come to grips with the fact that Steve had this whole new life with areas where he didn’t belong. He fully admits to himself that it’s an ugly feeling, even admitted it to himself back then, but it doesn’t mean that knowing it does anything to make it stop.

All things considered, including the fact that these days Bucky is less likely to try and de-escalate a difficult situation than he was before, mostly because he often has no capability or energy, it’s inevitable that there is a blow-out between him and Howard. 

Howard has just finished fitting a new part on Bucky’s arm, when he brings up his efforts to try and find Steve. He’s developed some new machine that would help in scanning the icy wastes, and is setting up an expedition. He suggests Bucky might take part in it, and just the idea feels like ice water in Bucky’s veins.

“I can’t,” Bucky says, shrugging on his coat and heading for the door.

“You know, I don’t get your attitude on this,” Howard calls after him. “You were his friend, shouldn’t you be happy to try and bring him home?”

“So what, I should dedicate my life to that? And what good would it do, even if it was successful? There’d be another monument for Captain America on some cemetery, probably in Arlington, because God knows they wouldn’t let him be taken away from politics and rest close to home. All of that wouldn’t make him any less gone.”

Bucky is out of the door then, his hands shaking. He feels like both his hands are shaking, even if one of them never has such human responses any more. Howard calls something after him, but he walks away without even hearing it.

He runs into Gabe who takes one look at him and says, “You look like today is one of those days you regret you can’t get drunk.”

It’s such a frank assessment that Bucky laughs, and some of the tension leaves him. “It really is.”

“Well, no harm in trying, is there? Come on, Sarge, it’s on me this time.”

***

Bucky isn’t at all surprised that he gets along fine with Peggy these days. Back during the war his reasons for distancing himself from her were mostly similar as they were with Howard, it was a similar kind of resentment. Now he’s found it’s entirely gone. They are bound by grief, and their grief is very similar in nature. They both know to separate Steve from Captain America, and they both mourn the man that is gone, not the icon. Granted, for Bucky it’s much sharper still, with Peggy having had ten years to learn to live with it, but the shape of it is the same. It’s something they share, and it doesn’t make Bucky resent her all over again, but brings them closer.

He likes her, and furthermore, he likes Daniel and the Jarvises and little Mandy, who very much like Jamie isn’t at all fazed by his arm. Maybe all little girls are like that. He’s happy that Peggy’s found happiness in her private life. He never doubted whether she’d succeed in work as she has, but this side could have gone differently. He’s happy, and he knows Steve would be happy to know she hasn’t let the espionage and national security take over all her life. He’s told her as much, and had worried for a moment she was about to burst in tears, but thinks it was important to tell her. These days he visits them occasionally, and it’s again a different kind of calm that he finds with her compared to how it is with his family or the Commandos.

Bucky’s next visit comes a week after he had the argument with Howard. It’s just Peggy and Mandy at home, since Daniel is on a business trip, and Bucky is vaguely amused by how she doesn’t even seem to consider that they are basically alone. Not that she is unconscious about appearances. Bucky knows quite well that the primary one of the reasons she and Steve kept a little bit of distance between them, and never fully were in a relationship beyond professional, was that they were conscious of how it would affect her if the wrong people were to know. Apparently now the appearances don’t matter so much anymore.

She talks to him about SHIELD, never secrets but in a way that’s clearly meant to make him interested. He’s fully aware of what she’s doing, and what she wants him to do. He just doesn’t know if he can take the offer, and he’s grateful she never formally puts it on the table.

He’s also aware that there’s something she wants to say, and he can guess what it’s about. When there’s a lull in the conversation, he asks her about it.

“You know that Howard cared very much about Steve, right?” she begins.

“I know. And you know that Howard’s memory of him is tangled with Captain America a lot more than ours.”

“I’ve noticed, and I get what you mean. But he’s just doing what he believes is right.”

“He is, and I’m not saying he should stop. Didn’t say so to him either. It’s a noble purpose, and if it helps him deal with all of it, then he should do it. But it won’t mean Steve is any less lost to us even if Howard succeeds, and he can’t expect me to be there, to be part of that chase.”

“Yes, I don’t think that would help you much, would it?” she considers.

“No, it really wouldn’t. It’s already —” Bucky pauses, searching for words, because he hasn’t really talked about this to anyone. “There already is a hole in my life, the part where I’m missing him, and if I build my life around that absence, it’ll never be easier. And I mustn’t do that, because if I let it happen, I’m going to eat a bullet within the next five years. Quite frankly.”

She nods, pushing the shadow away from her eyes. “What are you going to do, then?”

“I haven’t decided,” he tells her, honest. “Beyond trying to learn to actually live like a normal person again. But I’m thinking about it, I promise.”

***

It all does get better, however slowly and slightly. He takes to exercising regularly, and goes running in the early mornings when there aren’t many people around. Sleeping doesn’t come easily, but it becomes a bit more regular, nightly thing. He still doesn’t always use the bed. On very good days he manages it, on middling days he retreats to rest on his couch, and on bad days he sleeps in the alcove. It doesn’t feel like something to celebrate, but at least it’s manageable.

The nightmares are still common, and more varied than ever. There seems to be no pattern to it, he muses one night, when he’s had to get out of bed and is now pacing in the little space he has. Bad dreams come after good days, they come after bad days, relentless. He’s got his gun tucked in the waistband of his trousers, against all precautions. When you’ve survived a fall from a mountain and every bit of worst torture people can think of, things like gun safety feel a lot less significant. It’s still stupid, he knows, because his left arm is a constant reminder that he can be injured. Not to mention, if he is thinking of going onto field again, he needs the proper routine to be ingrained in his head, because otherwise anyone working with him can’t trust him.

He makes himself put the gun on the table and feels instantly naked without it. 

***

He sets up a routine for exercise, sleep, eating and seeing people. He makes sure it includes all the things people usually do, and for a lot of time it feels like he’s pretending. He sticks to it, because there is nothing else he can do. At least nothing that would lead to anything good. Most of the time he succeeds at least pretending he’s not making time and space for someone else inside his life. He often wonders if it’ll ever stop, or get easier.

He also isn’t sure if he wants it to stop, because even the idea that one day he wouldn’t miss Steve is like a punch to the sternum.

***

It’s been around a year from his rescue when Bucky makes an appointment with Peggy at SHIELD, to find out what exactly she has in mind for him. They talk for two hours, and at the end he thinks they have something he can do. There are conditions that he lays down; that he won’t kill for SHIELD just because, they can’t send him to take out someone just for being a political problem. Give him an actual criminal, that he can do. Or he can go on rescue and retrieval missions, and train people on the gun range. He was a good sniper during the war, and he knows he’s better now. He remembers they tested him, on the few occasions they thought he was docile enough to be given a rifle. Not that they didn’t regret it every time.

“I need a purpose,” he says. “I thought of doing something else, something physical. Maybe get a construction job. But I know it wouldn’t be enough.”

“You’re probably right. It is difficult to stop, even when we’ve given enough,” she replies, a knowing look in her eyes.

“You know who I’m blaming for it. Spent too much time close to him, had the damn sense of duty rub on me,” Bucky says, and is half surprised it actually comes out light.

Peggy smiles at him. “And I know if he heard you say that he’d roll his eyes. You had a sense of duty of your own, you did the right thing as often as you could. Still do.”

“If you mean with Steve before the war, I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like it was the most selfish thing I ever did.”

She hums and doesn’t ask him to elaborate, which is good, because he’s not sure if he’d have the words. He also doesn’t know if it’s something he would want to tell her, even if he knew what to say.

“How are you these days, really?” she asks instead.

“Isn’t that the kind of question you ask before you agree to have someone work for you, especially in this kind of a job?”

“What can I say,” she smiles at him again. “I’ve got a lot of faith.”

Bucky acknowledges it with a gesture. “Well, in all honestly, it depends on a day. Sometimes it’s better, other days are hard and bad. I know I’m not going to spook and shoot people I shouldn’t, so there is that. I wouldn’t be here, otherwise. And I guess, it’s something that I’ve accepted now. Some days are horrible, and I have to let them be that, and some days are fine, and then sometimes I just have to, I don’t know.”

“Act like it’s fine until it actually is?” she says, guessing exactly where he’s going at.

“Yes, that. I take it you have experience in it.”

They shake hands, and it makes him James Barnes, Agent of SHIELD.

**Author's Note:**

> I fully acknowledge that at times my sense of humor is fairly warped, and because of this I do find the title of this fic morbidly funny. In other context it might be nice and romantic, but with this fic you could (and my head always does) tag at the end "when we're dead". 
> 
> I've plotted the rough outline for this whole series up until Steve coming back and it's longer than I like to think. Also definitely means I'm not going to do these fully in chronological order, but the timeline relies enough on canonical MCU timeline it shouldn't be a problem anyway.
> 
> You can also find me on [tumblr](http://stellahibernis.tumblr.com/).


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